


All Puppies Must Be Collared, As Per Hospital Policy

by Sun_Spark



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Banter, Collars, Comfort, Comfort No Hurt, Established Relationship, Foreplay, Gentleness, Healthy Relationships, I just didn't write the sex part my dudes, Kink Negotiation, Leashes, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, No Sex, Pet Names, Play Fighting, Secret Relationship, Sorry Not Sorry, Teasing, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Why Did I Write This?, but Mark calls Derek Pup sooooo, do with that what you will, how did i end up here, not my fandom, not pet play, playfulness, they're both brats tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 07:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26967916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sun_Spark/pseuds/Sun_Spark
Summary: Mark and Derek have been in a relationship for a while, and even when they were punching each other they had enjoyed mock-fighting. Now that they're in a relationship, Mark decides to introduce the gift he got Derek via a day of playful bantering that leads to bratty mock-fighting and foreplay when they get home.(I am delirious rn, this summary sucks. Mark gets Derek a collar and introduces it by teasing. Derek is a brat. There is playful banter at the hospital that leads to mock-fighting and teasing foreplay at home. Alright?)
Relationships: Derek Shepherd/Mark Sloan
Kudos: 35





	All Puppies Must Be Collared, As Per Hospital Policy

**Author's Note:**

> My dudes, I watched like 5 seasons of Greys months ago when I was sick, it's not my cup of tea, but this thing happened. Don't ask me how. 
> 
> Do I need to give the disclaimer that I don't know technical surgical jargon? No? Okay.

“What is that?”

Mark was lazily twirling the circular object between his fingers as they sat in the isolated room waiting for the MRI scans to show up on the screen. He grinned. “Don’t know what a collar is Derek?”

A light scoff and a resolute stare into blank screens came in response. “Of course I know what a collar is, the question is why you have one.”

The grin turned into a smirk behind Shepherd’s back, but he kept his tone as innocent as he could manage. “Well, I have it because it’s a gift for someone.”

Derek didn’t respond as the scans began to start showing up and Mark bit back his grin as he stood and crossed the short space between them. He dropped the collar on the desk by Derek’s right hand on the mouse before leaning over the man’s left shoulder to peer at the screens, momentarily becoming serious as they discussed the images.

“Looks like a brain tumor, about the size of a golf ball, lodged behind the right eye.” Derek rattled off. “I can get it, but the safest way to do that will probably be from the side, through the temple.”

“Which means peeling off quite a bit of the face in order to remove the bones needed, and exposing one of the eyes.” Mark jumped in.”

“Not necessarily.” He drew a line on the scans that ran just behind the patient’s eye. “I think we can stop just before exposing the actual eye, but we might have to judge that in surgery. Either way, you’ll want to be in there with me.”

Mark, knowing the seriousness of the situation, bit back about five different jokes he could have made because even he had a bit of tact. “Yes, I will.” He stood and grinned silently as he saw Derek trying not to look at the collar still sitting two inches to the right of his hand. It has a washed-out mixture of blues, like old woodwork, with a soft inner lining the color of beach sand. And Mark was a little shit. 

“Huh.” And absentminded ‘What?’ came from Derek and Mark stepped around his chair to pick up the collar, casually remarking on his way out, “I just noticed that it’s the same blue as your eyes.” As he slipped it into his pocket. He was out of the room before Derek could comment. He, of course, had not just noticed that, but had rather made sure of it when he had purchased it, but then if there was one thing on the planet Mark Sloan loved, it was teasing his boyfriend.

***

The next time it came up they were in the hall, not a crowded hall Mark wasn’t that mean, but a hall with a handful of interns now turned first-year residents scattered around with their interns. None of them were actually paying attention to them other than the two residents assigned to their case and their annoying assortment of interns. They’d finished their debriefing and they were away from the patients and the majority of the nurses when the collar ‘fell’ from Mark’s pocket.

He picked it up without any great show but Izzy Stevens had to ask. Now normally Mark found her annoying, but today, with Derek frozen two feet away from him, today he wanted to give her a flower or something. 

“Why do you have a dog collar, Dr. Sloan?” Her tone reflected nothing but mild amusement and bewildered curiosity. The leering looks shared between some of the interns, however, were not welcome. His intention was not to humiliate the boyfriend that nobody actually knew about since they had wanted the peace and quiet of being private, no the intention was just to tease him a bit. So he ignored them and gave Izzy a friendly smile with an easy tone to match.

“Ah, one of my friends got a puppy recently, and it’s a gift.” He pretended the grin on his face was pleasantries for this conversation and had nothing to do with the death glare Derek was giving him with his back to everyone.

Izzy looked at the collar still in his hands and her brows furrowed with a little laugh. “That’s quite a puppy, sir.”

He grinned in earnest now, and somehow naive Izzy Stevens didn’t see it. “Well some are, and you’re right, he’s quite the _big boy_.”

Derek was successfully hiding the fact that he was choking and flushing red in the corner of Mark’s eye and Mark was successfully not laughing outright at this entire situation. There was a fine line in this game and he was treading it, successfully, but he was treading it. He slipped the collar back in his pocket and snapped his fingers at the intern holding his chart who had been zoned out and staring at something outside. “But enough about puppies, cute as they are, we have a patient with a brain tumor to take care of.”

That successfully put it out of everyone’s minds and sent the residents and their interns scurrying around like ants to get their preparations done. Derek finally turned back around from whatever had been so very fascinating in his files and glared at Mark, although it wasn’t very effective given that it held almost no heat, all of that heat currently being busy receding along with the flush going down the man’s neck. Mark just grinned and went to find the labs he needed.

***

They’re alone in a lounge and it’s been several hours the next time it comes up. They’ve successfully taken out the tumor and repaired the damage both from the tumor and the surgery, and their patient is in recovery expecting few to no complications. Mark knows better than to tease and be a distraction when someone’s life is on the line, but even if there hadn’t been a surgery distracting them he would have given it a few hours to let Derek calm down from the last time. He knows better than to involve anyone else again either, so he waits until it’s been several hours and they’re alone in an attendings' lounge.

It’s not actually the collar this time, no this time it’s about two and a half feet long, thin, and made of the same pretty washed-out, wind faded blue color as the collar. They’re working on files and paperwork, and he’s finished his a bit ago, so now he’s leaned back in his chair and he’s pulled the thing from his pocket, twisting it around his hands and intertwining it between his fingers, playing with it silently. Derek’s also finished his work, he’d been done for at least ten minutes, Mark knew because he’d waited for the man to start idly running a closed pen along the lines of ink the way he always did when he was finished but still distracted before pulling the thing out.

It took about five minutes for Derek to glance up at him, and by that time Mark had nearly zoned out himself, but the man’s question easily broke through his stupor. “And what is it this time?” It was said a bit guardedly as the man alternated between looking towards Mark from the corner of his eye and looking down at the pages of his files.

Mark decided against smirking or making any great show with his answer, he simply gave a small grin and held it up a little further where it was currently wrapped around both his hands. “The leash that goes with the collar.” He looked down at it with a small smile and decided to push a little more to try and gauge the other man. “The Pup’s a playfully little thing, but he’s not really trained yet.”

He chanced a glance at Derek and read him easily. Tensed shoulder, pinched brow, unfocused eyes staring at the pages, beginnings of a frown. Mark sighed internally. He was balancing on a line they hadn’t touched before, and he wanted his boyfriend comfortable to be the playful person he normally was. He dropped the grin and set the leash on the table, letting himself soften from the egotistical ass he presented to everyone in the outside world into something closer to the person Derek was used to dealing with at home. “Truth is,” He said softly, “I only got it because it matched the collar and I thought it was pretty.” He looked up from the collar and met Derek’s eyes, the latter having turned his head to look at him, and saw more consideration and curiosity than trepidation reflected in them. “The collar is the actual gift.”

He left it at that, and he left the leash sitting where it was as he stood to leave. He paused as he passed Derek, long enough to cup and back of his neck and press a firm kiss to the side of his head. 

***

Home is Mark’s apartment. They still have Derek’s trailer as a quiet place where either or both of them can go to relax, but they wanted to live together properly and for that they chose to move both of them into Mark’s apartment. It doesn’t require a ferry ride but it overlooks the bay from high up, so Derek still has a view of the boats he loves. The apartment is home and the trailer, and the wilderness around it, is their escape where life doesn’t exist. Home has a modern kitchen too large for two people with a breakfast bar and a dining table that still manages to feel comfortable and cozy. It has an open floor living room with a couch they can get lost in, a TV they almost never use hanging on the wall across from it, with a wall of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the bay and the forests of Washington State. That same living room has a fireplace for the winters with a faux fur rug so soft and deep they’ve gotten lost in it more than once. It has a bathtub and shower both big enough to easily fit the both of them in a room of frosted windows that fill the marble room or light blues and tans with prism’d light. It has an entry hall that easily leads to both the kitchen and to the step down into the living room, but just before that step it has a sliding double door of light wood. That sliding door leads to a comfortable double bed with dark silver sheets and blankets that look like mountain storm clouds, the bed sits to the left side of the room, with two dark wooden dressers across from it. To the right side of the room there is a light greyish-blue rug so soft sometimes they sit on it, and atop it sits a small coffee table of the same color as the dressers, two comfortable leather armchairs that can almost fit two people face away from the bed and towards the tall window framed by curtains the same color of the rug. Home has their shoes by the door and their coats hung up above them, their keys tossed on the table that sits by their door.

When they get home Derek shoves him, and it’s playful, and Mark is relieved beyond relief because there is a smile on his boyfriend’s face when his hands strike his chest just shy of painful. 

“You’re an ass!” It was said with a laugh as flat palms went to hit him a second time, Mark laughed in response, catching Derek by the elbows and pulling him to him. There were often times he was glad that Derek was shorter than him, and times like this were among them as he pulled the man flush against him, Derek’s hands pressed to his chest and his head fitting under Mark’s chin while they laughed.

“Seriously! You are an ass Mark!” He shoved at him a little bit and stared up at him incredulously, but it didn’t seem like he was too angry. “Izzy Stevens! You involved Izzy Stevens in your nonsense!”

Mark offered him a crooked smile. “Yeah, okay, that might have been a bit much.” He conceded sheepishly.

Derek rolled his eyes and both shoved and pulled at him in turn, hands fisted in the fabric of Mark’s shirt as they now were. His eyes fell to them and his expression became less humorous, serious but timid. Their laughter died down and they hovered there, sort of swaying into each other. Mark wasn’t going to push and eventually Derek voiced what he was thinking in a tentative and quiet tone. “I’m not into pet play Mark.”

Mark smile softly and ducked his head forward to nudge at Derek’s temple with his nose. “Neither am I Der.”

Derek peered up at him, amusement and confusion both clear in the small grin and furrowed brows he was wearing. “Then what…?”

He huffed a sheepish laugh and ducked his head, suddenly a bit subconscious despite having spent the day teasing the other man. “Pet play’s not my thing. But I think you in a collar would be beautiful, and some mild DomSub stuff might be.”

Derek didn’t say anything for a few minutes and Mark didn’t raise his head from the man’s shoulder, his stomach suddenly turning itself over in knots. He didn’t care if Derek said no, if he wasn’t comfortable with the idea then he wanted him to say no, but they’d never talked about things like this before and Mark suddenly found himself worried for the other man’s response. After a few heartbeats of silence that felt like an eternity to the blonde, Derek pushed at him gently, prompting him to raise his head and meet his eyes. There was no anger there, nor disgust, so that eased the tension in Mark a bit.

He smiled gently and one hand slipped down from Mark’s chest to pull the leash from Derek’s pocket. He held it up between them. “This _**might**_ be too much.” He said gently, stressing the ‘might’. His smile turned to a playful grin. “But I like my collar,” He leant forward to bump their noses together, wrapping his arms around Mark’s neck, eyes shining with mischief and affection. “and we can go from there.”

Mark grinned and kissed him in lieu of a response, taking the moment to brief in relief that he hadn’t pushed his partner too far. In truth, he hadn’t thought he had, but it was an anxiety he carried that one day he would. Derek threaded his fingers through the hair on the back of his head and tugged gently with a hum, breaking their kiss but not moving away. “Mark?” He called against the other man’s lips. He bit back a laugh when a distract hum answered him and pressed his body fully into his partner. “Mark. You’ve been teasing me all day.”

Mark chuckled, running his hands up from Derek’s waist to tangle them in his hair. “Yes, I have.” Smug. Smug and teasing were the words for that tone. Derek gave him a smirk that grew into a smile as he pulled away from him, stepping sideways towards their bedroom. He tossed the leash on the bed and turned back towards Mark, still standing on the other side of the sliding double door. He smirked, mischief written in every line of his expression as he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it onto a chair.

“You should really do something about that.” Teasing, just shy of bratty.

This was familiar territory. Anxiety forgotten, Mark gave his partner a feral grin, following after him at a lithe gait, darkening blue eyes never leaving his own. He didn’t bother to slide the door shut behind him, they didn’t live with anyone, and they had no neighbors, no one would walk in on them. He shed his own shirt as he went and it joined Derek’s as he got in Derek’s personal space.

“You’re right I really should.” Bratty and teasing on both counts. Derek didn’t break eye contact with him as the space between them went from several feet to a few inches and he grinned. Mark threaded his fingers through his boyfriend’s hair on either side of his head, pulling him in to kiss him deeply, carefully walking him back the few steps until he could safely move his hands to Derek’s chest and shove him just enough to destabilize him. The shorter man fell back on the bed, never panicking since this type of playfulness was normal to them and he trusted Mark, and the action caused laughter to erupt from his chest. For a moment Mark just stood there and looked down at him, taking in the sight of him laying there and laughing, and he smiled, a stupid, sappy thing full of affection.

The laughter quieted down to softer chuckles and Derek tilted his head up at him, returning the gentle affection. He sat up and reached out a hand, which Mark took easily, tugging the blonde onto the bed and moving backward so he had room to kneel between his legs. Mark met him in a kiss, pressing him back until his back met the bed again, Mark’s arms bracing the taller man’s weight on either side of his head. Derek looped his arms around Mark’s neck and enjoyed the feeling of slowly suffocating as their tongues danced. He giggled into the kiss when he made Mark moan from tugging on his hair, glad that he had grown it out in the past year so the strands were just long enough for his fingers to tangle in. 

Mark broke the kiss to trail his lips down Derek’s jaw to the spot just below his ear and Derek could feel the smirk against his skin as the teeth and tongue grazing that spot sent a shudder through his body. Fun though this was, he didn’t want to get there yet. He tugged at the blonde strands again, a little more firmly this time. “Mark?” They’d known each other long enough for the sharper edge of a question to differentiate from the thousand of other ways and reasons Mark had heard Derek call his name, so he got his weight stabilized on his arms and raised himself up just enough to look down at his boyfriend with a curious furrow to his brows. “What’s up Der?”

The brunette gave him a gentle smile, tilting his chin up to nudge his nose against his jaw affectionately before voicing why he’d interrupted them. “Didn’t you have something for me?” His tone was innocent enough, and when he pulled back he saw the questioning look had only deepened. The gentle grin grew a little larger, a little more playful as he tilted his head up, barring his throat pointedly.

Mild surprise washed over the blonde’s features. “You want to do that tonight?” He questioned softly.

Derek smiled and tilted his head up for just a few seconds, long enough to press a chaste kiss to the other’s lips before laying back down. “Yeah. I do.”

Mark grinned at him, and for all intents and purposes it looked like the same cocky-asshole-man-whore grin he threw around for everyone, but it was gentle. The edges of it weren’t ragged enough and the core of it was far too soft, far too affectionate. And none of that façade of a grin that everyone else got to see matched the adoration currently shining in Mark Sloan’s eyes. He was met with a sudden kiss that could be described by the words: breathtaking, passionate, and gentle as fingers threaded through his hair and pressed just enough not to be painful and instead pleasant, but he had been expecting it. When the kiss broke Mark ran gentler caresses through his hair with his fingers and hovered over his lips to whisper a gentle command, “Stay here.”

He was gone a second later and Derek stayed where he was as his footsteps receded into the hall to retrieve the collar from his coat pocket. He sat up, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his ankles, when he heard him step back into the room and his eyes fell to the sand-colored protective bag the collar had been sitting in all day. In all of two steps he had crossed the room and sat down in front of his boyfriend, there they paused for a moment and Mark huffed a small, self-conscious laugh. Carefully, he slid the collar from its pouch and set the bag aside with the leash before tentatively handing it to Derek.

Now that he got to look at it properly it was like old beach wood, the kind that had sat out in the wind so long that the color had been stripped away to create a beautiful pattern between the wood beneath and faded color on top. Someone had taken that type of color and made it reality in the washed-out blues and greys, the lights seeming to sit atop the darks on the leather collar, and while the inside lining of soft fur-like material was the color of pure light sand, it matched perfectly. There was a clasp in the back that the inner lining overlaid, but there were no metal attachments so it made no noise, instead, there was a single extra strip of thick leather at the front where the leash would attach if used.

He stared at it for a few moments, and then he gave a single, soft laugh. “It’s beautiful Mark.”

Mark grinned a bit ruefully and rocked towards him, knocking their knees together and it was almost like they were still kids talking about comics or stupid TV shows. “Yeah. I just hope it fits properly.”

Derek snorted and the ridiculousness of the notion of it not fitting after the day that went into this. “How is it supposed to fit?” 

Mark hooked a finger in it, not taking it from Derek but picking up some of its weight. “If I got it right? Just loose enough for me to slip a couple of fingers in.” He bit back most of his grin when Derek shivered.

He looked down at it for a few more moments, and Mark didn’t push, then he looked up and offered a softer playful smile than they had started with, mischief interwoven with the seriousness of this. “Put it on me.” Steady. Soft though it was, his voice was as steady as his hands ever were when he held a scalpel, betraying no doubt. All the same, Mark searched sea blue eyes for ay traces of doubt before, finding none, uttering a simple, “Okay.”

He took the collar from Derek’s hands and turned to face him, pulling his legs up underneath himself he sat on his knees and held the piece in front of him, pausing with it between them, looking for Derek’s permission even though he had made the request. He gave it with a gentle grin, tilting his chin up to bare his neck, mischievous eyes never straying from Mark’s even though Mark didn’t look away from what he was doing as he placed the leather band around Derek’s neck and fastened it in the back. He ran a finger along the inside when it was shut to make sure the lining was smooth over the fastening, and then he pulled away and sat back, giving Derek a moment to adjust to the new sensation.

Derek tilted his chin back down to level, and the first thing he did was take two deeper than normal breaths, and then he swallowed, feeling the leather comfortably brushing against his skin without constricting it. Mark was right about it being just a little loose, and because of that it shifted around his neck when he moved instead of staying still, but he thought he’d prefer that rather than something tighter. It was about two finger-widths wide, unobstructive unless he were to attempt to touch his chin to his sternum, and the leather edges didn’t cut into his skin, rounded out and padded by the lining as they were. He shifted his head around a bit and then one of his hands came up, his fingers brushing over the leather carefully, a bewildered but not uncomfortable expression adorning his face.

Mark sat back and watched all of this, keeping his hands to himself and letting Derek adjust to the unfamiliar weight and feeling. He noted the lack of any clear signs of anxiety or panic, any pulling or rapid breathing, any expressions or gestures of discomfort, and instead saw the kind of look Derek got in one of two places. He partly had the expression he normally wore when an interesting medical mystery was put before him for him to dissect, a thousand questions to be answered, and right now that was the dominant expressions dancing across his features – But there was also the beginnings of another expression he usually wore either here at home or at the trailer. It was a playful expression, one that asked how far he could push Mark and how far he could get Mark to push him, one that promised laughter in their shared pleasure because there was no answer to which of them was more of a brat, friends as much as they were anything else.

It only took a few minutes for the barely-there tension in Derek’s shoulders to leech out, and then Mark smiled in earnest. “I was right.” Blue-Grey eyes tracked up to him with a curious sounding ‘Hmm?’. “It is beautiful on you.”

A flushed color bloomed in Derek’s chest and crept up his neck to his face. “Shut up.”

Mark smirked, sharp and easy. “Like hell.” He lent forward easily, sitting up on his knees so he was above Derek, and hooked two fingers under the collar from beneath. He pulled up and forward, careful enough not to cause pain with the motion but with enough strength to force Derek’s chin up and to pull him forward and up, just shy of off the bed. Their eyes met for a moment and Mark looked carefully for any sign of distress, but that quickly changed to a feral glint when all he was met with was Derek’s playful and challenging gaze. He pulled Derek a little farther and kissed him deeply, not backing off until they couldn’t breathe, and even at that point they merely traded the one long kiss for a series of shorter ones. Derek resettled his weight so he could press up against Mark and thread his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands. Mark wrapped his free arm around the other’s back both to hold him close and to make sure that if he should fall back there would be more to hold him up than the hold on the leather around his throat.

Mark pulled Derek flush against him, lifting him off the bed, and laid him back against the mattress without breaking the kiss. That broke when Derek started giggling and ‘accidentally’ kicked Mark’s leg just light enough not to hurt while alternating between pulling at his hair and scratching at his arms and shoulders light enough to hurt him but effectively getting in the way of everything. Mark eventually stopped kissing him through the laughter and caught one of his wrists, pinning it down next to his head and pulling on the collar just a little bit as he sat up.

“You are such a brat!” Both his voice and his eyes lacked any real heat as he was met with the grinning and giggling face of his boyfriend, the laughter in his own chest that he was trying to hide painfully obvious. Derek cocked his head to the side and raised his brows at him. “Oh yeah?” He grinned, pointing at Mark with his chin. “You like calling me ‘Pup’.”

Mark opened his mouth. Then he closed it with a huff and a grin, playful glare ineffective against the smiling and triumphant stare he was getting. He shook his head and poked the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, grinning around it. “Neither of those points cancels out the other,” He bent to trail his nose along Derek’s forehead down behind his ear, saying **_“Pup.”_** pointedly as he went.

Derek just laughed quietly, hands once again finding paths to get in the way – pulling at Mark’s hair, pushing at his arms, scratching at his shoulders. Arms folding in between them just when Mark was trying to move. The force of it was enough to move Mark away from him, but the legs locked around his waist made it obvious that pushing him away wasn’t Derek’s intention. Mark had been kissing a trail behind his ear, across the column of his neck and around the collar, but eventually he pulled back with a scoff, exclaiming: “What is with the hands?!”

The sight of Derek biting his lip, eyes shining with more mischief than was healthy, and choking back laughter that was shaking with smaller frame told him immediately that it was on purpose. He scoffed, dragging his tongue across his teeth as they stared at each other. Derek finally lost it, laughing so hard he began clutching his sides. Mark couldn’t help it, that sound was among the most amazing things in the world to him, he couldn’t help it as the corners of his mouth pulled into a smile and he chuckled through informing his boyfriend, “You’re a little shit.”

Derek just grinned and nodded his head happily. “Yep!” Mark cocked his jaw to the side, raising a brow. “Are you capable of keeping your hands to yourself?”

Derek glanced to the side then back to him, no longer laughing, a thoughtful but still playful look taking over his features. “Well…” He started, reaching over to the side and picking up the abandoned leash Mark hadn’t been planning on using. He raised both arms above his head, crossing them at the wrist, the leash held in the upper fist. Holding eye contact with Mark he grinned, and it was playful but there was a serious edge to it too. “I’m sure you can figure something out.”

The smile slid from Mark’s face as he stared at the leash laying across Derek’s crossed wrists. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said the leash had been gotten as an afterthought, and this wasn’t even the intended purpose of it. This was not familiar territory. His hands fell to Derek’s thighs and he gently unhooked them from around his waist. He moved out from between his boyfriend’s legs and carefully straddled him, holding enough of his weight off of him for it to be comfortable. Once settled he laid his hands against Derek’s sides, caressing them up and down with gentle pressure. Derek didn’t move his hands, he didn’t let go of the leash, and he didn’t look away. He just let it stand.

Mark breathed out deeply and met Derek’s eyes, reading them was easy for him. “You sure about this Der?” Those eyes told him the answer before his voice did: Anxiety. Shyness. Trust. Determination. Comfortableness. “Yeah.”

Mark grinned, not a playful thing this time, but a small, gentle and affectionate smile. He leaned forward and reached up, taking the leash from Derek’s hands and gently grasping his wrists, laying them side by side. He looked down at the other while he did and saw him staring off at the other side of the room. “Remember your safeword Der?” he questioned gently.

Derek snorted but the smile he gave was soft and when blue eyes looked up to meet Mark’s, they were clear. “Artery.” Mark huffed a single laugh as he looked back to what he was doing and set to the task of carefully looping the leather around Derek’s wrists. “And I still say you should have chosen something easier to say in a stressful situation.”

Derek grinned. “I say it in literal life and death situations all the time. I could have chosen Arteriovenous malformation.” Mark snorted. “Again I say it: Brat.” Derek laughed and he grinned, that’s what he had wanted.

He finished and laid the last length of the leash in Derek’s palm, closing his fingers over it. He sat back and hooked two fingers under his chin, gently making him look up at his wrists. “Okay, you see this?” He watched carefully and Derek’s gaze held more curiosity than trepidation, that was good. “This won’t slip or pull tighter on its own.” He pointed at the length in Derek’s hand. “Pull that and the knot comes undone, okay?” Derek looked back at him and smiled softly. “Yeah.” He grinned and Mark nearly groaned, because that grin? That grin was the grin that Derek Shepherd got right before he nearly got them expelled from High School for a senior prank. “What?” 

“You forgot something.” That voice? Not as innocent as it sounded. So much mischief in it, so damn much. Mark just narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, waiting for the punchline. Derek grinned, sharp and playful, and then, being far too flexible for a man in his mid-30s, placed a foot in the center of Mark’s chest and pushed. Mark fell back, nearly off the bed with a surprised yell while Derek dropped his head back and laughed. When Mark had gotten his hands under himself for support and sat up to stare at Derek incredulously, the man just grinned ferally. “I have four limbs.”

In the blink of an eye, he was once again straddling the man, this time sitting _**on**_ his legs, and Derek was laughing. He cradled Derek’s head between his hands, hovering above him and biting back his own laughter. “Brat!” Another laugh erupted from the man beneath him. “ ‘Pup’ !” Yeah, he’s was never going to let that go.

Mark cocked an eyebrow at him. “You want me to make sure those limbs don’t work Shepherd?”

Derek raised his brows in return, chuckling quietly. “That a threat Sloan?”

He smirked. “I’ve left you unable to walk before, for,” He looked up at the ceiling as if thinking, then back down at Derek seeing him biting back more laughter. “several hours if I recall.”

“Well then,” Yeah, that was definitely a giggle in there. Mark hid a smirk. “That sounds like a challenge for you, not me Mark.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Shut up Derek.”

Derek grinned, chin jutting out. “Make me.”

Mark’s smirk grew. He hooked his fingers back in Derek’s collar and pulled it taut, mindful of Derek’s now reduced range of motion. “Gladly.”

**Author's Note:**

> Anybody wants to help clean up that summary, let me know.
> 
> Kudos/Comments appreciated. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
